


Recrimination

by hellkitty



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 03:11:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1453273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some little thing for Rung/Megatron 'analyze this'.  Probably obvious I've been rereading Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.  Spoilers through the end of Dark Cybertron.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recrimination

Rung tried to hide his nervousness as Megatron crossed the threshold to his office. Well, filled the threshold was a little more accurate, honestly, the broad titanium-silver shoulders scraping at the sides of the doorframe, the cannon (why does he still have that? Rung could just imagine Ultra Magnus's conniption.) rotated in what seemed like a habitual gesture to fit through small spaces.    
  
"Uh, hello." Rung's hands closed around his datapad as he rose.  "I didn't expect you for another--"  
  
"I don't like needless delays."  
  
Oh. So apparently waiting till his appointment's scheduled time was a needless delay. "Well, I'm...yes, all right. If you could, well...just have a seat over there?"    
  
The couch he used suddenly seemed ludicrously small as Megatron crossed over to it, giving it an amused headtilted look before he sat down, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.  "It's been a long time," he said, optics fixed on Rung's face.    
  
"Long time since...?"  Normally Rung was better at picking up his patients and the directions they were steering: Megatron was, for all his long reputation, a blank slate.    
  
"Since Maccadam's.  Rodion.  Do you remember?"  
  
That...was a long time ago. "Yes," Rung said, gaze dipping down to his datapad for a moment. "I remember.  Your friend...."  
  
"He _was_ my friend.  Then he became one of you." An old wound, somehow still unhealed.  It was strange how Impactor had that effect on people. Springer, and now Megatron.  
  
"You're one of 'us' now, too," Rung said, pointing one slim digit at Megatron's chassis.      
  
"Am I?" A grin, just enough of an edge to it that it made Rung uneasy.  "Perhaps I'm simply here to betray you all."  
  
"You wouldn't be telling me that, if you were."  
  
"Or I could, and count on you believing that."  Megatron sat back, the smile growing easier, more amused.  "Though for that to work, I'd have to have some faith in Decepticons left." His optics went distant for a moment. "And they in me."  
  
"They don't?"    
  
"I've heard they think I'm a traitor." A shrug.  "I am, perhaps, to what they've made of my cause.  All I ever wanted, though, was a free, equal Cybertron."    
  
It felt like a game, like a test, like Megatron was giving and withholding to test Rung, to draw him out.  No, Rung, you've been listening to war stories for too long, borrowing the paranoia of others.  He's a patient, like every other patient.    
  
Except that he was Megatron.  
  
"I am surprised," Rung said, evenly, feeling a sort of giddy boldness rise with his voice, "that if you wanted a free Cybertron, you let the war go on so long."  
  
An inclined helm, as if Rung had scored a point. Or, Rung realized, simply had his point deflected. "Rodion, that night," Megatron continued, like that thread of conversation hadn't been dropped. "It taught me so many things."  
  
"I wish I'd just bought him that drink." Rung wondered how many things would have gone so differently if he had.  For all of them: he, Megatron, Orion Pax.  Everyone.  
  
Megatron shot him a scornful look. Not a fan of that kind of regret, apparently.  "Impactor and I were arrested.  Because we stood up for what we believed. Because we acted on our beliefs.  But mostly because someone who could do that was considered too dangerous back then: someone with, what did the humans call it? 'The courage of his convictions'." His grin grew almost predatory again, sharp with irony.  "Convictions."    
  
"I-it's not that I don't appreciate the, erm, assistance that night," Rung said, "But surely you realized that you and Impactor went, well, a little far."  
  
"Who draws that line?" If Rung had expected to rile Megatron, it looked like he was about to be disappointed. "Who decides how far is too far?"  
  
"Social contract," Rung said.  "You can't have a society that functions without some understood limitation on violence."  
  
"Mmmm."  Megatron seemed amused. "And shouldn't that 'understood limitation' apply to them, as well?"  
  
"People have a right to defend themselves," Rung said.  
  
"Ah."  A long moment, too long, theatrically long, Rung realized, before Megatron spoke again. "We were merely defending ourselves from a different kind of violence, slow, but just as sure."    
  
"There must have been another way."  
  
Megatron sighed. "Are we here to rehash ancient history?"    
  
"History shows who a person is," Rung said. "Their choices, their actions, their motivations."  
  
"...the fact that _they_ didn't get arrested." Megatron cocked one supraorbital ridge. "Nor did they bother to thank the two who did get arrested in their defense."    
  
Rung shifted, uneasily.  He'd faced overtly hostile mechs before: Impactor, who never sat, pacing restlessly, threatening violence; Whirl, who'd famously had a staredown his entire first session.  But this was a new kind of resistance.  It would be almost easier to understand if he was angry, if his hostility didn't have an almost playful edge.  
  
Maybe, he thought, Megatron knows no other way. Still, the accusation rankled.  "I. Uh, thank you?" He frowned. "Though I would normally prefer to talk things out." He couldn't condone violence, especially not in his name.  
  
"They weren't interested in listening. Neither was the Senate, even when one of their own confronted them. With my words." Megatron turned for a moment to look out the porthole. It normally showed the spangled stars of space, but now, long rays of sunlight cut through the Cybertronian atmosphere.  "He never thanked me, either."  
  
It was strange how there was no hostility under his words, at least none that Rung could detect.  And it struck him that Megatron was used to being the center of attention, good or bad. And he was used to speaking. Maybe it was best to stay quiet and see what else came out. For good or ill that kind of ego insisted on an audience.  
  
It didn't take long: Megatron spread out his hands, shining and new. "Do you know how many times I've been rebuilt? I've lost count, honestly."  He turned his hand over. "You wonder, after a while, if so much has been taken from you, so much replaced, then what, who, are you really?"    
  
"Whatever you want to be."  
  
A laugh, husky and deep. "I expected better from you, Rung. Really."  
  
"I don't follow?"  
  
"The Decepticons view me as a traitor.  The Autobots view me as a traitor and a genocide." He tapped the Autobot insignia on his chest. "'Whatever I want to be' is limited by that.  By others telling me what I can and cannot do. Again."  
  
A moment of clarity, sparkling and bright. Megatron couldn't put it aside, he was right. He'd always be, well, Megatron. There would always be those who saw him and remembered friends, lovers they had lost at his hands, remember the stories of ruthless violence that even now seemed to shimmer under his armor.  
  
"Starting over is a myth," Megatron said, but there was no bitterness or anger in his voice, only a strange kind of resignation. "You can never leave behind your past, who you were, what you did." He straightened up. "And honesty, I don't want to.  It is what made me who I am."  The grin seemed a bit tense, forced. "When they brought me back from Earth, they had me in a variable voltage harness. Did you know that?"  
  
Rung nodded. He'd heard, at least.  
  
"Every day, every hour, almost, someone would come in to threaten me, to remind me how easily--just the push of a button--they could kill me. Sometimes--I won't name names--they couldn't resist a little try, a little shock, just to see me in pain."  
  
"That's...horrible." He wanted names. That was a war crime, wasn't it? The war had still been going on.  He hated to think of Autobots doing that, but he hated more that he wasn't surpised.  
  
"I needed it. It reminded me that they were afraid of me. That even bound, helpless, vulnerable, they were afraid. And I would think, well...what are they afraid of, even now?"    
  
A long silence, Rung not even moving the datapad on his lap. He hadn't noted down any of this, but it was almost too late to start now. "What was it?"  
  
Megatron laughed, and it was rich and sincere this time. "I don't know. I still don't know. But I needed that, I needed a question, that question, to pull me through, something for my mind to work on in the darkness." The mirth ebbed from his voice. "Maybe that's what I'm still trying to work out."    
  
Rung felt something, almost a pang of envy. For so long he'd been doing this, sending mechs through psych evals he didn't believe in, to send them back to fight, to get more damaged. He hadn't healed anyone, in all the war. At best, he'd triaged them, patched up the best to go back out to the very thing that was breaking them.  His own purpose, his own want to heal had been in shadow for so long, and he would have given just about anything for a question like that, something to pull him out of it.    
  
He'd thought the _Lost Light_ quest would do that: get him out of the war, away from violence. Get him to where he could do his work.    
  
It hadn't. Fortress Maximus. Red Alert.  More strings of failures, mechs too damaged to come back.  He'd thought he could help, just as Megatron had thought he could fight his way through. Perhaps they were both wrong.  
  
"You're looking thoughtful," Megatron observed, his voice quiet. The voice of a natural public speaker, able to modulate sympathy.  It was a clue as to how he had worked, how he was still working, how he'd gotten so many mechs to follow him, to pledge their lives and wills to him.  Optimus had charisma, but it was nothing like this: sheer presence, sheer, unmoving faith in...something, even if he didn't know what it was. Himself, maybe.    
  
"I'm just...reflecting on how much has changed," Rung offered, finally, weakly. "And how much it has changed us." Change wasn't always good, he thought, feeling his shoulders sag.    
  
"I learned something from Shockwave," Megatron said. It felt like a non sequitur, abrupt and strange. "Not _that_ ," he waved his hand, dismissing the Ores, Shockwave's plan,  "but the idea of chemistry, the metaphor of it.  An element, a substance changes, with heat or acids or bases.  But it's always itself.  And," he straightened, fingertip tracing the edge of the Autobot sigil. If Rung looked closely enough, he knew he could still spot the embossing of the the Decepticon marking underneath, not gone, not erased, simply covered over. Still there. He wasn't sure which thing Megatron was calling his attention to. "you can always add new elements, come up with a new compound.  Changed from what it was, but not from its basic substance."  He tilted his head. "It's not your psychology, perhaps, your 'fresh start'."  
  
And the implication hung in the air between them: but it worked. 

Rung couldn't help but wonder, still, how much of what he'd been shown was real, how much meaningful, and how much show. 

But he knew Megatron did.


End file.
